MICUA Matters Newsletter

Hopkins' Fund for First Gen Students

Spring 2017

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels and his wife, faculty member Joanne Rosen, have established a $1 million financial aid endowment for undergraduates who are among the first in their families to attend college.

The Daniels-Rosen First Generation Scholars Fund was created with $500,000 directly from the couple and another $500,000 presented to the University as part of a Carnegie Corporation of New York Academic Leadership Award that Daniels received in 2015.

The fund, together with a Johns Hopkins match applied to all new endowed gifts for undergraduate aid, is expected each year to meet the financial need of four undergraduate students in the University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering.

“A top priority for this University and for our President is ensuring that we are able to bring the best students to Johns Hopkins, no matter their economic circumstances,” said Jeffrey H. Aronson, chair of the University’s board of trustees. “I am deeply grateful to Ron and Joanne for their personal commitment to students who come here without the advantage of generations of college access.”

Daniels has made student support of all kinds a focus. “My own father and his siblings were the first generation of his family able to pursue a university education,” Daniels said. “Access to a transformative education made a profound difference in his life and in his children’s lives. The opportunity to help others achieve their educational, personal, and professional aspirations through a Johns Hopkins education is deeply meaningful for Joanne and me.”

Daniels has also emphasized Hopkins' role as a key anchor institution in Baltimore, launching the Homewood Community Partners Initiative and the HopkinsLocal economic development program, restructuring the Baltimore Scholars program, and helping to establish the Henderson-Hopkins School in East Baltimore, among other initiatives.